After a pour from the tap, you're handed a tulip-shaped glass. Inside, a jumble of bubbles rumble in a thick mass of frothiness. You're left with a tan head on top of a dark black liquid. It's 7 a.m.

Take a sip.

Go ahead. It's Wisconsin, nobody's going to judge you.

Enjoy the creamy smooth feel of the cool liquid sloshing around in your mouth. Ahhhh. It's a refreshing jolt to start your day.

Nitro cold brew coffee is trending. And why wouldn't it be? It starts with a brewing process that creates coffee that's a little more sweet, more rich and a whole bunch more caffeinated than traditional hot coffee, and ends with the nitrogen addition creating a creamier texture.

Last year it began popping up on taps in local coffeehouses from Green Bay to Milwaukee to Wausau.

Draughts of nitro coffee have been pulled at Luna Coffee Roasters, De Pere, for about a year now. Though they've been roasting a special blend of coffee beans that have helped establish Luna Stout as one of Hinterland's most popular beers.

"We've done Luna Stout with Hinterland (brewery) for a number of years," says Luna co-owner Mark Patel. "I've always enjoyed that, especially on nitro. That (nitro) brings out nice characteristics. I thought that would have the same effect with our cold brew."

Patina Coffeehouse, Wausau, located next door to Red Eye Brewing, is under the same ownership and began pouring nitro cold brew about the same time as Luna. The coffeehouse uses Colectivo Coffee blends in its nitro offering. (Last year the Milwaukee-based roaster was working with 3 Sheeps Brewing to develop its cold brew process and the nitro system that's featured in nine of its cafes.)

Seth's Coffee, Little Chute, had served draft beer at one time but early this year hooked up a nitro brew featuring Milwaukee-based Pilcrow Coffee.

"We learned about nitro cold brew at Coffee Fest in June," says Red Bank general manager, Theresa Kronforst. "Once I tried it, I knew we had to have it. After a few failed attempts at finding someone to wholesale it to us, I found Ryan Hoban at Pilcrow. We started carrying it in July and it has been a huge hit."

Then there's Lodge Kohler, across the street from Lambeau Field. There isn't a beer connection here, but building from the ground up afforded Tom McGinty, director of food and beverage operations for Destination Kohler, the opportunity to get its exclusive blend of cold brew coffee, developed by Sheboygan-based Torke Coffee Roasting Co., on nitro.

"For me it's about conversation starters," McGinty said.

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Nitro cold brew is on tap at Lodge Kohler across the street from Lambeau Field.(Photo: Daniel Higgins/USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin)

And it's a rapidly growing share of the coffee market. One report from Mintel Group shows the cold brew segment grew 580 percent from 2011-16.

While a nitrogen coffee looks like a nitrogen stout, with the cascading effect in a frothy head, nitrogenation of java is more than just for looks.

"Although cold brew is really good, there is something great about having a beverage that has some sort of ... effervescence to it," says Marco Carrera, who was coffee quality and roasting manager at Colectivo during the cold brew and nitro innovation period. "It really opens up the flavor a lot. That creaminess really came out of it. To me it reminded it me almost of a latte with milk in it without having the milk in it."

Sweetness meets creaminess. That's a big draw. (Well, that and cold brew has about double the caffeine of coffee brewed with hot water.) Cold brew coffee tends to be a little sweeter, and a lot less acidic, because the brewing process of steeping a coarse grind of beans in never-been-heated water for 18 to 24 hours draws out different compounds. The nitro adds the creaminess. Think of it as creamer without the calories or flavor distortion for those of us who prefer our coffee (hot or cold) black.

Cold brew is served on nitro at ACOCA Coffee in Appleton.(Photo: Daniel Higgins/USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin)

Though at ACOCA Coffee in Appleton, you can get your cold brew hot. This bit of coffee brilliance is steeped in the adage, "the customer is always right."

Bill Wetzel, ACOCA co-owner, says a customer asked if they could get the cold brew heated up.

If you want your cold brew served hot, the baristas pour the cold brew from the tap, then give it a blast of steam from the milk frother.

The result is a hot coffee that also retains most the cold brew characteristics that make it popular.

Of course it doesn't hurt that ACOCA roasts all of its beans in-house. And by in-house, I mean in the front of the house. The small roaster in the window of the coffee shop tucked in among chairs isn't decorative. It's a fully functioning roaster.

At single locations like Patina, ACOCA and Luna, brewing small batches of cold coffee is manageable with about 4 pounds of grounds to 5 gallons of water. Likewise, Lodge Kohler uses specially designed pouches from Torke to brew about 5 gallons of coffee at a time.

For Colectivo, with multiple cafes throughout the Milwaukee area, maintaining quality while producing large quantities was a bigger challenge.

Enter 3 Sheeps Brewing founder and co-owner Grant Pauly.

Colectivo has been applying its expertise in roasting specialty batches of beans featured in select 3 Sheeps brews for the past four years. If you've tilted back an Uber Joe, you've tasted their collaboration.

This time around, Pauly played the role of expert when it came to brewing, bottling and nitrogenation know-how.

Colectivo's journey to nitro cold brew began in 2015. It started with the process and the coffee.

"With cold brew it is a different science. It's a lot sweeter and fuller flavored," says Pauly. "I've been cold brewing at home forever. We had to figure out how to mass-produce cold brew."

Colectivo roasts and grinds the coffee and ships it to the brewery in Sheboygan, where all the cold brewing is done. The brewery is adding dedicated equipment, made from converted dairy tanks, for coffee.

Once the cold brew was dialed in, getting a nitro system set up proved a quicker process. No, you can't just hook up the same nitrogen system used for beer and expect it to work with coffee. That's chiefly because coffee lacks the naturally occurring carbon dioxide in beer. That CO2 aids in the addition and release of nitrogen in beer.

This is where Pauly's knowledge of nitrogenation of bottled beer innovation comes into play. To date, 3 Sheeps is the only Wisconsin brewery bottling a year-round nitro beer, Cashmere Hammer, and has begun a series of seasonal bottled nitro brews. Pauly and his team invested 18 months of research and development into bottle nitro beer.

Pauly gets a bit sheepish when it comes to the nitro coffee solution, citing proprietary reasons. But after a few last-minute tweaks to the cold brew after testing on nitro systems, Colectivo began rolling out kegs of cold brew to be nitrongenized this past spring to cafes that had taps in place.

There are a variety of methods for nitrogenating coffee. Lodge Kohler purchased a system from one of its vendors. Patina shakes its kegs. Luna has a carbonation stone in its kegs, which has the effect of shaking the kegs.

While customers at either of Seth's locations, Appleton or Little Chute, can get a pour of nitro cold brew, so can folks at Appleton's farmers market on Saturday mornings from a nitro system carted there via bicycle.

Could bottles of nitro cold brew be coming next? Possibly.

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Cold brew coffee can be had in bottles at Colectivo Coffee cafes. It's also available on nitro at select locations.(Photo: Daniel Higgins/USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin)

Colectivo recently added bottled cold brew for customers at its cafes. The bottling is done by 3 Sheeps, and Pauly says a quick pasteurization gives each bottle a shelf life of at least 90 days. Teams at Colectivo and 3 Sheeps tested bottles under a variety of scenarios that included being in a refrigerator, being in a warm spot and even in the sun.

With someone like Pauly, who fully admits that "I've gotten into the geekery of coffee," it's difficult to believe he isn't thinking about nitro cold brew in a bottle. I mean, he does have it available in the 3 Sheeps taproom.

Nitrogen nation

If you want a taste of nitro cold brew, here are few spots serving the trendy java.